Neoclassicism

Thank you for helping us expand this topic!
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.

Ads by Google

This topic is discussed in the following articles:

main reference

in the arts, historical tradition or aesthetic attitudes based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. In the context of the tradition, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of antiquity;
Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but inspired by antiquity. Thus the terms Classicism and
Neoclassicism are often used...

architecture

The classicism that flourished in the period 1750–1830 is often known as “
Neoclassicism,” in order to distinguish it, perhaps unnecessarily, from the Classical architecture of ancient Rome or of the Renaissance. The search for intellectual and architectural truth characterized the period. (In the 18th century, modern classicism was described as the “true style,”...

clothing style

A covered-up look dominated male attire from the 17th until the late 18th century, when the Neoclassical movement led to tighter, more revealing clothes. Skin-coloured knee breeches in buckskin became the rage, and waistcoats shrank, so that from the waist downward the male form was again on show. A naked style affected the army too; uniforms became skintight, and the male form was displayed...

It was not until the end of the 18th century, when Neoclassical taste came to the fore, that the exposure of the female form was again a major issue. When the English novelist Fanny Burney visited Paris in April 1802, her modest wardrobe was found too full: “Three petticoats! no one wears more than one! Stays? everybody has left off even corsets! Shift-sleeves? not a soul now wears even a...

drawing

...be made with varying admixtures of clay and in any desired degree of hardness. The hard points, with their durable, clear, and thin stroke layers, were especially suited to the purposes of Neoclassicist and Romantic draftsmen. The Germans working in Rome, in particular, took advantage of the chance to sketch rapidly and to reproduce, in one and the same medium, subtle differentiations...

...19th century produced a drawing style that, in accordance with both the Neoclassical and the Romantic ideal, emphasized once more the linear element. In Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, idealistic
Neoclassicism found an exemplary expression of strict linearity, and the pencil drawing became a downright classical form. The Nazarenes and Romantics in Rome and the Alpine region (Joseph Anton...

European culture

...can be grouped into half a dozen kinds, not all on the same intellectual or artistic plane, nor all distinctly named then or now. One discerns first a retreat from the ugly world into a species of
Neoclassicism. Such were the French poets known as Parnassians. Strict form, antique subjects, and the pose of impassivity constitute their hallmark. In painting, the work of Puvis de Chavannes...

furniture

chairs

During the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of Classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark...

contribution of

Chippendale

From the 1760s onward, influenced by the great English designer Robert Adam, Chippendale adopted the new Neoclassical style. Existing bills for work carried out by his firm at Nostell Priory and Harewood House, Yorkshire, during this final phase of his career identify the fine Neoclassical mahogany and marquetried satinwood furniture with which he supplied these houses and show that, as...

Cobb

...Vile, their firm becoming one of the most important among London’s cabinetmakers. While Vile created works in an Anglicized Rococo style, Cobb’s furniture of the 1770s was executed in an elegant Neoclassical style. Vile retired in 1765, and Cobb continued alone until his death. Up to 1765 the firm supplied furniture to King George III of England, but after Vile’s retirement Cobb apparently...

Phyfe

Sheraton

English cabinetmaker and one of the leading exponents of
Neoclassicism. Sheraton gave his name to a style of furniture characterized by a feminine refinement of late Georgian styles and became the most powerful source of inspiration behind the furniture of the late 18th century. His four-part
Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers’ Drawing Book greatly influenced English and American design.

jewelry

...forms to turn toward Classical ideals of harmony and brought about a decisive change in European tastes and decorative forms. Curved lines no longer appeared in the ornamental repertoire, the new Neoclassical style being characterized by greater simplicity, together with severity of composition. Jewelry forms, too, were influenced by decorative motifs based on Greek and Roman models, and the...

Latin American art

The Neoclassical style, which combined conscious Greco-Roman references with a return to the calmer, balanced, and more-rational forms of antiquity, became popular among Iberian academics in the period before the wars of independence; its clear connection to European history was no doubt appealing to Iberian rulers seeking to reassert their presence in the colonies. The most impressive...

In the 18th century the monarchies had imposed
Neoclassicism on their main Latin American colonies in order to connect them to Europe and support the ruling establishment. After the wars of independence, however, this relationship became complicated.
Neoclassicism continued to be propagated by some government-run academies, although the style was often used to depict indigenous themes.

literature

literary criticism

The Renaissance in general could be regarded as a neoclassical period, in that ancient works were considered the surest models for modern greatness.
Neoclassicism, however, usually connotes narrower attitudes that are at once literary and social: a worldly-wise tempering of enthusiasm, a fondness for proved ways, a gentlemanly sense of propriety and balance. Criticism of the 17th and 18th...

structure and form

...are more likely to follow strictly the rules of Aristotle’s
Poetics than are great novels. Nevertheless, the scheme does provide a norm from which there is infinite variation. Neoclassical dramatists and critics, especially in 17th-century France, derived from Aristotle what they called the unities of time, action, and place. This meant that the action of a play should not...

...of formlessness. (The automatic writing cultivated by the surrealists, for instance, suffers from the excessive formalism of the unconscious mind and is far more stereotyped than the poetry of the Neoclassicist Alexander Pope.) Form simply refers to organization, and critics who attack form do not seem always to remember that a writer organizes more than words. He organizes experience. Thus,...

music

...aesthetic ideals of the late 18th century. Following the leadership of Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, and Sergey Prokofiev, among others, most prominent composers entered a Neoclassical period characterized by restraint of emotional content; simplification of materials, structures, and textures; a greater attention to craftsmanship; and a revival of concern for linear...

Piston

Satie

...Ravel, and, in particular, Claude Debussy—of whom he was an intimate friend for close to 30 years. His influence on French composers of the early 20th century and on the later school of
Neoclassicism was profound.

Stravinsky

...derived from much simpler elements than Debussy’s. His complex chord structures often break apart to reveal two unrelated and dissonant diatonic chords sounded simultaneously. In the works of his Neoclassical period, Stravinsky reverts to a clear harmonic language reminiscent, at least as regards individual chords, of the 18th century; but in harmonic movement from chord to chord there is a...

...as Borodin or Aleksandr Glazunov. But the
Symphony in C (1940) and
Symphony in Three Movements (1942–45) are unique. The former, a Neoclassical work, reinterprets in Stravinsky’s language the thematic construction and sonata form of the Classical era. The result, far from a simple parody of Classical style (such as in Sergey...

orchestration

...for orchestration. One was responsible for the Neoclassical style; the other, gathered around the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, drew heavily on the Romantic movement for its direction. The Neoclassical composers sought to free music from the influence of Impressionism. Whereas the Romantic composers had frequently employed the instrumental forces at hand to create a deliberate sense of...

painting

Neoclassicism was a widespread and influential movement in painting and the other visual arts that began in the 1760s, reached its height in the 1780s and ’90s, and lasted until the 1840s and ’50s. In painting it generally took the form of an emphasis on austere linear design in the depiction of classical themes and subject matter, using archaeologically correct settings and costumes.

Barry

...figurative compositions from classical antiquity and from literary works. Stylistically, however, his linearity and undulating forms brought him closer to the work of the leaders of the English Neoclassical style, the sculptor John Flaxman and the poet-painter William Blake.

Gros

After the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons (who gave Gros the title of baron), David was forced into exile and Gros became the head of his studio. As the heir of
Neoclassicism, Gros tried to work in a style closer to that of David. He continued to paint large compositions—e.g., the ceiling of the Egyptian room of the Louvre (c. 1824)—but these academically...

Hamilton

Ingres

painter and icon of cultural conservatism in 19th-century France. Ingres became the principal proponent of French Neoclassical painting after the death of his mentor, Jacques-Louis David. His cool, meticulously drawn works constituted the stylistic antithesis of the emotionalism and colourism of the contemporary Romantic school. As a monumental history painter, Ingres sought to perpetuate the...

phases

Empire style

Georgian style

...amateurs set out to reform architecture in accordance with the classical tenets of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (
see Palladianism). The second important Georgian architectural style,
Neoclassicism, came into fashion about the mid-18th century. The models for the architecture of this period were no longer the buildings of the Italian Renaissance but those of Classical Greece and...

Louis XVI style

visual arts produced in France during the reign (1774–93) of Louis XVI, which was actually both a last phase of Rococo and a first phase of
Neoclassicism. The predominant style in architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts was
Neoclassicism, a style that had come into its own during the last years of Louis XV’s life, chiefly as a reaction to the excesses of the Rococo but...

The Louis XVI, or Neoclassical, style began, in fact, to take root before the death of Louis XV in 1774; Mme de Pompadour and her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, were among the first to be attracted by the new classical style in the 1750s. From 1748 onward the characteristically French regard for formality was stimulated by the archaeological discoveries at the sites of the ancient Roman...

pottery

...1763–74 is typified by the figure modelling of Michel Victor Acier, who came to the factory to share the position of
Modellmeister with Kändler in 1764. From 1774 to 1814 the Neoclassical style was increasingly used, and the designs of Sèvres and of Wedgwood (Wedgwoodarbeit) were copied.

...onward was painted in the studio of James Giles of Clerkenwell. The factory was bought by William Duesbury of Derby (see below) in 1770 and entered a phase known as the Chelsea-Derby period. The Neoclassical style was introduced together with the figure in biscuit porcelain made fashionable by Sèvres. It closed finally in 1784.

Nymphenburg porcelain

Bustelli was succeeded as
Modellmeister by Dominikus Auliczek, who introduced the Neoclassical style at Nymphenburg; his most interesting works are models of animals and hunting groups. In 1797 Auliczek was succeeded by Johann Peter Melchior, another exponent of
Neoclassicism, who had worked at the Höchst and Frankenthal factories before joining Nymphenburg; he is known for the...

Saint Petersburg porcelain

...She provided annual subsidies, as well as able directors and foreign artists, whose skills were passed on to Russian workers in the reigns of her successors. The porcelain of Catherine II’s reign is Neoclassical, and the objects produced are typified by large, imposing services (such as the “Arabesque,” with 1,000 pieces for 60 settings) and biscuit figure groups. Also during this...

Wedgwood ware

...Works) factory. In 1768 Bentley became his partner in the manufacture of ornamental items that were primarily unglazed stonewares in various colours, formed and decorated in the popular style of
Neoclassicism, to which Josiah lent great impetus. Chief among these wares were black basaltes, which by the addition of red encaustic painting could be used to imitate Greek red-figure vases; and...

...in consequence of royal patronage. Mass-produced, it was nevertheless of high quality, being light, durable, and tasteful both in its shapes and in its decoration, which was often in the popular Neoclassical style. It filled a long-felt need for good tableware that the middle class could afford, and it fixed for two centuries the prevailing taste for variants of cream-coloured domestic ware....

related styles

Pompeii excavations

...in this style, which became popular throughout Europe. Jacques-Louis David and his student Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres drew inspiration for their paintings from the excavations. Indeed, the Neoclassic style stimulated by the discoveries at Pompeii completely replaced the Rococo and became the artistic style of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic period.

Regency style

...and ornamental elements. The classical revival of Regency style, emphasizing purity of detail and structure, adhered to a stricter archaeological interpretation of antique modes than either the
Neoclassicism of the 18th century or the concurrent French Empire style.

sculpture

The 18th-century arts movement known as
Neoclassicism represents both a reaction against the last phase of the Baroque and, perhaps more importantly, a reflection of the burgeoning scientific interest in classical antiquity. Archaeological investigations of the classical Mediterranean world offered to the 18th-century cognoscenti compelling witness to the order and serenity of Classical art and...

Canova

Italian sculptor, one of the greatest exponents of
Neoclassicism. Among his works are the tombs of popes Clement XIV (1783–87) and Clement XIII (1787–92) and statues of Napoleon and of his sister Princess Borghese reclining as
Venus Victrix. He was created a marquis for his part in retrieving works of art from Paris after Napoleon’s defeat.

Nollekens

Thorvaldsen

sculptor, prominent in the Neoclassical period, who was the first internationally acclaimed Danish artist. Prominent in Roman intellectual and artistic circles, he influenced many emerging artists from Europe and the United States.

relief

...conditions of lighting. Lorenzo Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Santa Theresa,” with figures carved almost fully in the round but encased in a marble altar, offers a most impressive example. Neoclassical artists of the early 19th century temporarily revived experimentation with low reliefs in pursuit of what they saw as classical rigour and purity; such works relied on fine surface...

theatre

France

Theatre companies in France in the early 16th century were playing a mixed fare of moralities, miracle plays, farces, and
soties. The most important company was an amateur guild called the Confrérie de la Passion, which held a monopoly on acting in Paris. In 1548 it opened its own theatre, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, a long narrow room with the...

Italy

While all the innovations seemed to originate in Italy and then spread through Europe, the plays that were first performed on the new stages in Italy were extremely dull. Far from liberating the creative mind, the Classical ideals had only constricted it. Partly to blame was the adoption of the so-called Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, which became, in the hands of theorists, a...

production

Time likewise has a dual character in drama. The performer and audience exist together in chronological time. But the actor as character exists in dramatic time. Neoclassical drama of the 17th century, especially in France, endeavoured to make the duration of the performance coincide with that of the play’s action. But, as a rule, drama has achieved its effects by accentuating the discrepancy...

Waterford glass

Waterford glass spans two stylistic periods. Rococo shapes and cutting continued to be manufactured by Waterford glassmakers after 1770, when thinner, more restrained Neoclassic—or Adam style—pieces were being made in England. The Adam style, however, was gradually adopted. The Waterford glasshouse ceased production in 1851 largely owing to heavy British excise taxes on glass that...

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.